How do we retain talent in KW?

[tvot]

Another thing not mentioned in the article, but that I hear from friends in Silicon Valley, is career mobility. There is so much density of companies there that if your start-up goes bust or you don't like your job it can be super easy to find another job. It can be a problem for the companies themselves who would prefer more loyal employees, but think of North cutting 150-200 people and how quickly that would be absorbed down south vs. locally.

Think back to the BlackBerry cutbacks, and how fast those people were absorbed by the local companies. Today, 200 people finding tech jobs in Waterloo Region is a total non-issue.

Do you think it's difficult to find a tech job in the region today?

It can be, yes.  

I was at BlackBerry for 12 years and know plenty of people who moved to California, England, Washington, Toronto, etc.. I know hardware people that retrained in firmware at Conestoga College and still took a while after graduating to find work. When I started looking for work after BlackBerry there were plenty of people at the Communitech JobSeekers meetups who had been searching for a while.

There are some less-educated people I knew who managed to go from "unskilled" factory work to more demanding roles within BlackBerry but have found it hard or impossible to find quality work.

Following the local tech jobs, the vast majority are software, the number of hardware positions is very small, especially when the niche fields don't line up. Plus there are some companies locally that take many months to hire. Posting a job then putting it on hold below another position or cancelling it all together.

Another thing from the CivicTech meetup the other night is that someone mentioned that there are often over 2000 software/coding positions open in the region, but people there in hiring positions mention not finding any good candidates in their applicants.

In some cases, it's miss-match of skills vs. the current market, others are missing that *one* piece of experience that they could be brought up to speed on if given a chance. But in some cases, maybe it's that people hiring are looking for super-stars and there are a lot of plain/solid people that need jobs too.

We have a lot of small tech players locally, but could do with a few more larger employers if we really want a healthier market. Sure, there's a lack of stability in most jobs, but I know a few people from the 2015 cuts at BlackBerry who were cut by 1-2 other start-ups folding before being cut by North; that's a lot of stress in less than 4 years.